#for genuine connection and love

[quietforest-system]

how are people ACTUALLY finding partner systems and system friends

i literally just can't figure out how to do it, especially online

i keep seeing people posting "psys applications" or "friend applications" and that just seems. almost too inorganic?? like wdym i have to fit into this criteria for you to even consider talking to me, i don't like that. and i'm not talking, like, you have to have a certain stance in syscourse or not be a terf or something, i mean people saying "we HAVE to be able to talk about our SHARED interests"

i don't want to advertise myself as wanting a partner system but i want to meet people and find a system that genuinely enjoys our time, who we feel safe with, and who will actually care/not just source date

is that weird?? am i weird for that??

- miles 🌱

[druid-for-hire]

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled "immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[emiko-matsui]

the funniest thing about the bad kids meeting ayda is she took one look at the right side of the table and didn't give a shit about any of them and then became absolutely obsessed with every single person on the left side of the table

[dizzybizz]

they got that ND swag

these shirts man omg pls i love em so much

[ruporas]

green haired guy that has haunted my character types for 10+ years

[gaywarcriminals]

The soggier a Bingge is, the better. Bingges looking "cool" is actually a sign of distress. A happy, healthy, and properly resocialized Bingge must be a a pathetic creature with mop-like quantities of water dripping from his fur.

[galedekarios]

minthara's dating profile 🩸🗡️

[x]

[theerurishipper]

Honestly, I do love Dick as Nightwing and Bruce and Dick's complicated relationship, but sometimes I like the old days when things were sweet and simple you know? When it was just them and Alfred and they all had fun with each other. Like when they blew off boring parties to go on patrol by using Dick's bedtime as an excuse. When Bruce let Dick go off on his own and said he was allowed "a little escapade" and ruffled his hair. When Alfred always brought coffee and "turkey sandwiches with Swiss cheese" to the Batcave while Dick and Bruce happily talked about their nightlife escapades. When Dick would make Bruce laugh regularly.

When they discussed Hamlet while riding in the Batmobile. When Alfred picked Dick up from school and dropped him off on dates and helped him go behind Bruce's back on cases. When Dick and Bruce would play fight with each other. When Dick made Batman's meetings with Gordon "more optimistic." When Bruce was being a helicopter parent and wanting to know why Dick would want to go to a public school. When Dick would sneak off with Clark when Bruce wanted him to stay back to finish his homework, and Clark did it for him before Bruce noticed. When Bruce teased Dick about his failed date, and they talked about it and their love lives. When Bruce apparently told stories about Joker to Dick during rides in the Batmobile. When Dick was actually the one who named the aforementioned Batmobile. When they would banter even in between a serious case. When Dick would cling onto Bruce to annoy him. When Dick was contemplating how alone he felt, and Bruce just showed up to catch him and do a routine on the trapeze with him. When Bruce would call Dick "kiddo." When Dick even called him stuff like "Bruce-ter." When Bruce used to call Dick "chum." I miss those days.

Yeah a lot of these are from Robin: Year One but that's just because it's the one I remember most. But there's a lot of them just having a good time and it doesn't feel like we see a lot of that anymore.

[selfshipping-haven]

Okay. I'm gonna be real with you.

Yes, selfshipping should be for you. It should make you happy. You should make things for yourself.

But also, humans are social creatures, right? We like to share things with others and make connections, right?

So why should we look people in the eye, people who get 0 notes and interactions, and tell them that they should be doing all this for themselves, when other people get fanart for their ships?

Would it really kill people to interract more with people they don't know? People who can't draw as well or as constantly, or have less stamina, or just aren't talked to very much? Would that really hurt?

[kaiminluu]

"when you slam the door i think you know, that you won't be away too long, you know that i'm not that strong"

hi @campbyler you destroyed me

[circusk]

wings and love

[deoidesign]

Time and Time Again comes back tonight!

Thank you all for being so patient with me, I know it was a long hiatus.

My health was struggling, my arm was (is) hurting, and I decided it wasn't worth it. I'd rather be slow!

So thank you for giving me that grace, and I hope you'll be there with me for the rest of the series.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

the WHRP team @ Wally

[natjennie]

getting some responses on my post about kristen and her parents conversation, specifically the "isn't it kinda funny that helio chose you and you were the one to bring the daytime back" and I think it's really interesting how different people responded to it like. maybe it's because I live in the southern united states but. there is a lot of religion, specifically christianity, as that is the obvious analogue to the helioic faith, that is downright evil, I agree. and obviously the prevalence of it is harmful to a lot a lot a lot of people, just as it's harmful to kristen in fiction.

but you have to understand that the individual people are deluded, they genuinely believe what they're doing is right. it's really easy to be like "ugh they sicken me it makes me so mad" in a theoretical sense but. do you have drive through workers wishing you a blessed day. do you have people see your kt tape and offer to pray for your pain to go away. like. idk I just think we have to have a little bit of compassion and understanding for people that are so entrenched in their faith that they do truly believe from the bottom of their heart that what they're preaching is true. especially in a world where divine magic is real!! kristen TALKED to helio. she makes literal miracles happen on the daily. so faith in that world is gonna be heightened to a crazy degree.

obviously I condemn their human-supremacy and their cult practices etc etc etc but in that little moment I felt for the applebees. it didn't make me mad or disgusted or annoyed. it made me sad. because they saw their daughter perform a miracle of the sun and it meant nothing to her. that "that doesn't feel special at all to you?" wasn't from a place of arrogance. they weren't lauding it over kristen. they were pleading. begging her to see it from their eyes: she is the chosen one. she is a prophet of helio and has been doubting and they want what's best for her. she's their savior. she brought the sun back from the endless night. that doesn't feel special at all to you?

[mxwhore]

Idk if you already got this request a while back but ever since I saw your sphinx Martin I would think what about a Harpy Jon to go with him

i hadnt actually! very fun to think about